Bulletin E-Edition:
Joining Central Oregon’s green wave
Mike Costanti brought Western Community Energy, his renewable energy business, from Bozeman to Bend last summer. Here, he hopes to hire more people.
By Andrew Moore / The Bulletin
Published: March 01. 2009 4:00AM PST
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Western Community Energy’s Mike Costanti with his black Lab, Ed, at The Old Mill, near the headquarters of his renewable energy business.
Melissa Jansson / The Bulletin
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Green jobs. Economists and government officials mention them a lot these days as representing the nation’s burgeoning renewable energy industry and in the hope that their development can help the country regain its economic footing.
In Bend, there are a number of renewable energy companies, including IdaTech, InEnTec and PV Powered — and now Western Community Energy, which moved here last summer from Bozeman, Mont.
“We chose Oregon because of the variety of state incentives,” said company principal Mike Costanti. “Oregon gets wind, and we like that.”
Proving there’s more to green jobs than hype, the company — which builds and operates small-scale wind power farms — plans to more than double its staff this summer as it moves to meet the growing demand for renewable energy.
And to the delight of government officials, the company relocated here, in part, to take advantage of the supportive renewable energy business climate the state has strived to create.
“Oregon is very pro-renewable energy and (Costanti) wants to be in areas where that’s happening,” said Clark Jackson, an Oregon business development officer in Bend.
Lou Torres, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Energy, said Western Community is the type of renewable energy company the state is hoping can help form a new economic backbone for Oregon.
“We believe that jobs in renewable energy are typically pretty good family-wage jobs and those are the kinds of jobs we really want to encourage, so the state is very much interested in companies like Western Community coming in here because we feel like that will be a growing sector of the economy in the next few years,” Torres said.
Costanti said Central Oregon’s many recreational opportunities and its central position between Salem, the coast and windy Eastern Oregon — where many wind farms are located — also influenced the relocation.
The privately held company, founded in 2007 by Costanti and which currently employs seven, moved into a Bend office overlooking the Deschutes River. There are few decorations up and Costanti’s black Lab roams the office — giving it the feel of a startup trying to stake a claim in the renewable energy rush.
Wind power currently comprises roughly 2 percent of the nation’s power production. But many state and federal mandates require governments and power utilities to purchase or generate a significant portion of their electricity from renewable sources — including wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, tidal power and others — in the coming years.
In Oregon, public utilities are required to purchase or generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. Gov. Ted Kulongoski has set a goal for state government to use 100 percent renewable power by 2025, according to the governor’s 2005 Renewable Energy Action Plan. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Energy hopes 20 percent of the nation’s energy will be produced from renewable resources by 2030.
Costanti said Western Community specializes in small-scale community wind projects, which typically involve a business partnership with a landowner who provides the land for Western Community to erect a wind farm and is then guaranteed revenue from the sale of the electricity in return. This helps keep capital costs low, said Costanti, adding that he prefers partnering with landowners because it helps to keep profits in local pockets.
“We generally split (revenues) 50-50 with owners,” he said. “We cut (landowners) in on the action and that approach leaves a lot more value in the economy. What’s important for us is we want to create value in the community. We want to create win-win situations.”
The flip side is Western Community’s projects tend to be smaller in size, at least compared with those that can be financed by huge corporations, such as Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish company whose main U.S. office is in Portland. Iberdrola’s Klondike Wind Power Project in Sherman County generates roughly 400 megawatts annually, or enough electricity to power more than 115,000 homes, according to Iberdrola.
Costanti said Western Community currently has several small-scale community wind farm projects in Oregon worth roughly $8 million that are in various permitting stages but should go in the ground this year. For such projects, the company uses a 50-kilowatt turbine manufactured by Entegrity Wind Systems Inc., of Boulder, Colo., typically perched on a tower between 100 and 150 feet tall.
In December, the company completed a 1.17 megawatt wind farm near Nome, Alaska, which will replace an equivalent amount of energy that was previously generated by annually burning some 200,000 gallons of diesel, Costanti said.
Western Community also maintains the wind farms it builds.
The company also is starting a large-scale wind farm project, one which will feature much more powerful 2-megawatt turbines that stand on towers between 300 and 350 feet tall. It also is working to erect 50-kilowatt Entegrity wind turbines this summer at seven Oregon schools as part of a broad educational outreach. The working turbines won’t generate loads of electricity, but they will be valuable in teaching children and communities about the benefits of renewable energy, Costanti said.
“From our perspective, we have this philosophy of becoming members of the community where we work and we think this program is a way to do that,” Costanti said.
Costanti said the company plans to hire this summer and will begin posting jobs on its Web site, www.western communityenergy.com, in the coming weeks. It will seek individuals skilled in project management who can help the company with its upcoming wind projects.
Andrew Moore can be reached at 541-617-7820 or amoore@bendbulletin.com.
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